Your digital life can get just as cluttered and chaotic as your "IRL" life if you're not too careful.And if you work remote even some of the time, that can add to the massive amount of online information you're juggling on a regular basis.That's why many of us on the Engadget team have done a lot of trial and error with a bunch of digital tools to see if any of them can help us keep things organized personally and professionally.
Thankfully, there are tons of good productivity tools out there — these are some of our favorites, many of which are free or have free tiers that you can dive into if you're keen on trying them out.Quick OverviewSimplenote$0 at SimplenoteNotion$0 at NotionFinch$0 at FinchPaste$30/year at PastePomofocus$0 at PomofocusTodoist$0 at TodoistReminders in iOS 18$0 at App StoreBear$0 at BearIntegrated calendars and reminders (Apple / Google)$0 at Play StoreSee 4 moreSimplenoteSimplenoteI've always been pretty low-tech when it comes to productivity; nothing has yet to replace sticky notes as my preferred tool.But thanks to its open-endedness, Simplenote comes close.I keep a single file with all of my tasks, and every weekday I pick three items to get accomplished.
Sometimes they're simple little reminders, like messaging a friend to say hi.Sometimes they're big projects, like completing a feature article or tackling my taxes.But surfacing just three items gives me a clear focus for the day.
Beyond being my to-do system, Simplenote is also the home for any ideas I want to jot down for work and life projects.Everything from random game design ideas to notes about my cats' vet visits to holiday menu planning lives in this app.It's an extension of my brain that comes with me everywhere on my phone and laptop.
The other reason I favor Simplenote over a dedicated to-do app is because it's so minimal.There's barely any formatting and the UI is practically invisible.Between the tags and search, I can always find what I need from my collection.
Plus, the whole thing is free.I'm the first to admit that this do-it-yourself approach won't be everyone's cup of tea.But Simplenote essentially lets me have a digital stack of sticky notes at my fingertips and that's exactly what I want.
— $0 at SimplenoteNotionNotionIn 2022, I wrote a news story about Notion and its then-new AI feature.I didn’t know it then, but that article would be a preview of my career moving forward.First, because I would eventually start reporting on the AI industry full-time, and second because Notion became my go-to notetaking app — primarily first for work, but quickly thereafter for much of my digital life.
Perhaps ironically, it wasn’t the AI features that convinced me to make the switch.Instead, what I’ve come to appreciate the most about Notion is how easy it is to format text and other elements.Rather than relying on a cumbersome formatting bar, Notion uses a command line interface.
So say you want to add a bulleted list to a document you’re working on, all you need to do is type “/bulletedlist.” This gives Notion a slight learning curve, but after learning just a few commands, I found it became second nature to format a document.More importantly, I never felt like the interface was getting in the way of my writing.Another great feature of Notion is how it handles file organization.
Pages are the app’s basic organizational building block, and they work just like you would expect.Using the formatting interface, you can add text, images, to-do lists and more to a document, but it’s also possible to nest pages within one another.In that way, you can create whatever file structure works for you.
For my work at Engadget, I have dedicated pages for features, news, how-tos and buying guides.When I start working on a new story, I first go to one of those pages to file my story into the correct category.Thanks to the structure I’ve created and the app’s sidebar, it’s always easy for me to find a piece I’m working on or reference an older article; in fact, I’ve never had to use Notion’s search feature.
That’s a dramatic change from my experience with something like Google Docs.I know the last thing anyone wants to do is try a new notetaking app, but if you’re looking for a better way to organize your digital life, try Notion.There are great tutorials on YouTube where people share how they’ve used the software to organize their projects.
$0 at NotionFinchFinchSometimes we need a little help in life, and for me, that help lately has been coming from a bird that lives in my phone.Finch is a free self-care app (with a paid option) that has a virtual pet built into it, so taking care of yourself translates into taking care of your little bird.It’s all about positive reinforcement — Finch allows you to assign yourself goals each day, and you’ll be rewarded with the in-app currency, rainbow stones, for completing them.
You can then use those stones to buy items for your bird and dress it up in cute outfits.The app lets you build personalized daily to-do lists using a combination of your own custom goals and its suggestions.Then, you can track progress in certain areas — like productivity or health — by grouping related tasks together as “Journeys.” I really appreciate how Finch offers a gentle way to form better habits and combat those moments where we may be lacking motivation or energy.
There’s a supportive social element, too, as you can add friends on the app and send each other messages of encouragement.It’s a great option for anyone who might need a little push to get things done, but doesn’t want to be guilted when they don’t hit their goals.$0 at FinchPastePasteI discovered Paste clipboard manager a little over a year ago and it’s hard to imagine how I worked without it.
It gives you an endless clipboard, saving all of the text, links, photos and other things you copy, allowing you to organize all that information with tags and access it all across devices (Apple only for now, unfortunately).I have a ton of small snippets of text I need to access regularly at work, and Paste makes it much easier to do so than the “dumping ground” Apple Note I was using previously.My most important and frequently accessed snippets I pin with the Work tag, so I can filter by that tag to make finding what I need even more efficient.
I can also edit content directly in Paste, so when I need to tweak a snippet of text, it’s easy to do so and immediately paste the revised version where I need it.I have other tags for articles I want to read later and a wishlist of sorts for items I want to buy eventually, but work remains the bulk of my Paste activity.For someone like me who tries to stay as organized as possible all the time, Paste is well worth the annual $30 subscription charge because it’s one of the tools that allows me to do just that with ease.
$30/year at PastePomofocusPomofocusPomofocus is a browser-based productivity tool that’s delightfully simple — and free.It’s a web timer inspired by the Pomodoro Technique, a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo that aims to break up work and focused effort into 25-minute intervals.It works for me, especially if I’m feeling mild writer’s block, distracted by the firehose (and garbage fire) that is global news, or my coffee hasn’t yet kicked in.
I can mentally negotiate with myself that I just have to keep writing — or focusing my research – for 25 minutes, then I can check my email, catch up with Engadget editorial’s Slack-based banter or just have another darn coffee.Sure, I could use a timer app on my phone, but then… I’m picking up my phone that has Reddit, WhatsApp, or even worse, .Pomofocus ticks away in a Chrome tab, with even its tab icon indicating whether it’s break time or (still) work time.
It’s free.It runs on anything with a web browser.It has audio notifications, you can set it up to offer timed breaks (both long and short) and it just… does the job.
There’s a premium plan, but I’m not sure why I’d need template timers or reports on how much I’m using the web app.It promises no ads, but there aren’t any ads in all the time I’ve used the free tier of Pomofocus.I wish there was a one-shot ko.fi-like payment system, though, as it’s definitely saved me on multiple work and non-work deadlines.
$0 at PomofocusTodoistTodoistI am forgetful, so for years I’ve used various reminder and to-do apps to try and make sure things don’t slip through the cracks.For years though, Todoist has been my go-to brain dump.Making a new task is exceedingly simple; my go-to is to use a home screen widget on my phone to immediately pop something into the Inbox.
Then, once I have a few minutes, I’ll organize those into different projects, set reminders, tag them or add whatever notes I might need to get the task done.Pretty standard stuff, but the fact that Todoist works on basically any device at this point (web, Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, Apple Watch and probably more I’m forgetting) means I can always access this important data.I feel even better about paying the $48 annual subscription fee, too, because the Todoist developers added a ton of useful features over the last year or so.
Projects now have multiple views: In addition to the default list organized by date, you can switch to a Kanban-style board with cards or see everything in a weekly or monthly calendar view.To make that calendar view more useful, specific tasks can now have durations.So if I add something like “write up a short piece on Todoist,” for example, I can estimate that it’ll take me 30 or 60 minutes and time-block my day, instead of all tasks having a default and unchangeable time.
Finally, you can add “deadlines” to tasks, which are grouped differently than simple reminders.If I have a story due on Friday, I can set the deadline then but also have that task pop up a reminder every day so I don’t forget about it until the last minute.Finally, Todoist includes a robust set of templates for any long-term task or project you might want to tackle, which is a great little inspiration tool.
They run the gamut from “read more books this year” to “employee onboarding” or “bug tracking” for developers.They’re a fun way to kick-start a project and you can customize them all as you see fit beyond the default options.My only quibble with Todoist is that it has a distinct lack of visual pizzazz, but when it works as well as it does, that’s a minor issue I’m happy to overlook.
$0 at TodoistAppleReminders in iOS 18Apple has continued to add and improve what you can do with its Reminders app.It added tagging, Siri integration, collaboration and even smart lists that tap into AI to figure out what your grocery shopping list contains and group items together for easier shopping in-store.But my favorite feature is the ability to geotag reminders, for example, when you leave work, when you leave home or when you get back home.
It’s the perfect way to nudge you into picking up that milk you need to buy for tomorrow’s breakfast.Also, if time gets away from you thanks to a random phone call at the office or laundry that needs drying, the idea of reminding you when you’ve already left a location – but not before it’s too late to go back – has been transformative.I’ll always have my phone, but I may have forgotten a friend’s birthday present as I head off to their party.
There’s another update that came with iOS 18 that didn’t make headlines.In fact, I even neglected to mention it in my first impressions, but iOS has finally integrated Reminders with the Calendar app, meaning anything with a deadline or due date is effortlessly ported across both apps.It’s a shame it doesn’t get its hooks into Google Calendar, especially when iOS gives you the option to port across to Google’s app when you highlight a date on an email or a web page.
But hey, we need something for iOS 19, right? $0 at App StoreBearBearApple’s default Notes app for the iPhone, iPad and Mac is one of the company’s under-the-radar successes.It’s a really powerful tool that continually gets new features.However, if you’re primarily an Apple user and want something more flexible and capable, look no further than Bear.
It’s a gorgeous app for capturing text, whether it is just a few random thoughts, longer journal entries or articles or a full-on book.It has loads of formatting and text-export options, including Markdown, and you can easily attach files, pictures, scribbles with an Apple Pencil or code snippets.I mostly just use it for text and little lists, but it’s extremely flexible.
It also has great tag-based organization — if you just type # plus your tag of choice, it’ll create an entry in the sidebar so you can find all notes with that tag.And unlike the folder-based organization in Apple Notes, you can add as many tags as you want, so notes can shop up in multiple places.There’s also an extremely useful feature that lets you link one note to another.
I use this a lot when I’m writing a review; it lets me quickly jump from where I’m composing the copy of a review back to another document that has my notes and impressions from testing.$0 at BearGoogleIntegrated calendars and reminders (Apple / Google)Both Apple and Google have long offered calendar apps, and they’ve both also had reminder / to-do apps for ages as well.(Google, unsurprisingly, has put to-dos in many different places over the years, but things are generally grouped in the Google Tasks app now.) But in the last few years, both companies have done something that is so smart I’m not sure how it took this long for it to become a thing: integrating reminders directly into the calendar app.
This means that I can look at my work Google Calendar and see not only meetings but also any tasks that I need to complete in one single view instead of jumping between apps.It may sound simple, but it just works better with the way my brain handles things.Instead of trying to figure out if something should “go on the calendar” or be a reminder, they all just show up in one place so I can get a fuller picture of my day.
If you’re not someone who feels the need to pay extra for an app like Todoist, it’s definitely worth checking out how Apple and Google have handled integrating reminders into their calendar apps — it’s a nice organizational step forward in apps you’re quite possibly already using.$0 at Play Store